A 18-40GHz 10W GaN Power Amplifier MMIC Utilizing Combination of the Distributed and Reactive Matching Topology

This paper describes the design and measured performance of a 18-40GHz 10W power amplifier (PA) MMIC utilizing combination of the distributed and reactive matching topology fabricated with an advanced 0.15μm Gallium Nitride (GaN) HEMT technology process. At the output stage of the power amplifier, reactive matching is used for better output power and power added efficient (PAE) design. To increase the gain and optimize the input return loss, distributed amplifier has been adopted at the input stage. The power amplifier MMIC demonstrates 10-18 W output power, over 12dB power gain and PAE of 15-27% over 18-40 GHz band under 20V drain bias. The chip is compact with the size of 3.2×2.8 mm2 and it delivers an average output power density 1.52 W/mm2 over the chip area. To the best of our knowledge, the pout, PAE and power density are highest among the published work for K/Ka-band PA MMICs.

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